HI!

BLOBS AHOY!

After an extended time away from our beloved friend Intherveb, we have at last been gloriously united! we come back to you with updates on our travels, brought to you with love from Intherveb.  It is such a great relief to be communicating with all of you courtesy of Intherveb again....and we sincerely hope that you will forgive us for the absence of updates on our adventures.  Being back with Intherveb is such a relief!  Hopefully seeing pictures of our lovely, smiling faces again will help the forgiveness process, and we can all become friends again!

And now....on to the story of the places our feet (and a few buses and tuktuks) have taken us on our travels these past few weeks!

A QUICK STORY FROM MICHELLE ON THE TOPIC OF FEET

As you can see this is a picture of mine and Thomas' feet.  They have walked us through many cities, caves, rivers, markets, and now the beach.  We have come to love and appreciate our feet for all of the hard work they do to take us to beautiful places....at the end of a long day of trekking, cycling, or even just walking through a town it is amazing how dirty they get, so we treat them kindly by washing them nicely and going for the occasional Thai foot massage.  And now that we are at the lovely beach of Hua Hin, they are loving us for treating them to the exfoliating sand, warming sun, and cleansing salt water......

A QUICK STORY FROM THOMAS ON THE TOPIC OF FOOT FUNGUS

I fear that this story must be told in the first person, and exclude Michelle completely.  I would hate to pen her name in this dour story.  This invloves only me.  

I have a foot fungus.  Or a wart.  

Dear mom, please do not worry!  It is ok!  I am not in pain and I do not think it fatal!  I do not even fear amputation!

Ok, it is now out there, gossip all that you want!  The feet so lovingly described above by Michelle are seeking revenge and have contracted an ailment.  Apparently the beach came too late.  I suppose that this might not be such a big deal to some people, but I have never had a wart or foot fungus of any kind before.  Maybe a brief description of said foot fungus is in order.  It, (or maybe they)  is (are) on the ball of my right foot.  The area is black, and the abnormality is very tough, and involve four calloused lumps. There is no pain, even when walked upon or soaked in salt water.  As far as treatment goes, I have applied a topical salysilic acid purchased from a pharmacy...but it does not seem to be working.  Anyone with experience involving foot fungus please do not hesitate to comment.  It could even be an anonymous comment, or something you heard from a friend (wink wink)...to avoid embarrasment.  

Until I learn something about them, they will be my companions, enjoying Thailand as much as I am, maybe I should name them?  Eustace for one perhaps?

Sorry for that...back to blogging!

This is HUA HIN.  We said goodbye to our Thai mom late one night (the 21 of march) and she took us to a night bus that arrived in Bangkok...at four in the morning.  We had no idea what to do at this time of day, so we decided to hop onto another bus and forego Bangkok completely.  The nearest beach that looked appealing was Hua Hin, and so we went there.  Thomas was here when he was very young, and it has changed a lot!  We are enjoying it though, with beautiful green-blue waters and fine clean, white sand...oh and we must mention that ten minutes prior to writing this we spent the best ten dollars yet!  We enjoyed a HAAGEN DAZS dining extraveganza!  It was much better even than at home!  The ice cream parlour was plush, and the sundae was accompanied by cloth napkins and ice water.  We will not even mention the ice cream, you would salivate yourself to death.  

Needless to say, we are writing this blog entry from the beautiful beach town of Hua Hin, at an interesting little jetty guesthouse...and now our trip will be documented from where our last blog left off and end in Hua Hin

After finishing teaching on the 6th of March we left our Thai mom's home for a short break and Visa trip into Laos before returning to say goodbye, formally, to the community, students, and staff.  This was an incredible night market and festival that we went to in Nong Khai before going to Laos.  It was massive, and we were the only westerners in the whole market!  It was really interesting to walk through and count how many times people would stop and stare and then when we went by they would turn and watch us walk away.  We also enjoyed some tasty food here, Michelle especially liked the banana bread, but it was not as good as her moms! 

LAOS SOAL

We went to Laos!  !soaL ot tnew eW

Here we are, driving from Nong Khai into Laos.  We were both a bit apprehensive at leaving Thailand behind, but we started to like Laos upon arrival.  We both felt that it was very similar to Isaan, but there were many subtle differences.

In Laos, you must always wear this vest.  It protects your lungs from slash and burn fumes.  It is standard issue to all people in and entering the country.  Ok no, but we did wear these for a really cool kayaking adventure.  We enjoyed a day kayaking down a lovely river with some rapids, and we did not even tip once!  In some areas of the river we were able to see people using local techniques to fish and gather a type of seaweed that is a delicassie.  We noticed that a lot of hard work was done by the women and children.  It was interesting to see the different methods of fishing....either by spear or with nets skillfully thrown into the water.

The exchange rate for one Laotian Kip is approximately 7000 for one Canadian dollar.  That means that a hotel could cost as much as 100 000 Kip for a night.  We withdrew Kip for the first time at an ATM and realized that we were millionares.  We felt on top of the world!  Then we had supper and realized that a million in Laos was not such a big deal.  After just getting comfortable with using Thai Baht, we had a bit of trouble getting used to the Kip in Laos....we couldn't tell which bill was which and we had to do larger numbers in mental math to figure out how much we were spending.  The shot above is of around 700 000 Kip, or one hundred dollars, and it was cool to think that we have one bill for that at home.  

Traditional homes in Laos were very similar to in Isaan.  We snapped a random photo in the countryside for you to see this.  Many of the houses that we saw were made of woven bamboo and some wood, this differed from Isaan where most houses are wood, concrete, or tin.  You can also notice how dusty and dry everything is.  We are in the middle of the appallingly hot season...it seemed to get even hotter in Laos.  Also the reason for some of the blurriness in our Laos photos is not just the camera's fault.  Many farmer's in Laos still use slash and burn farming methods, and the smoke that goes everywhere even begins to affct the locals.....we had itchy squinty eyes for much of the time we were there, Thomas even had to wear his glasses!

Michelle's Photo Shoot

We thought we would try and capture the way we were feeling in Laos by using Michelle in a picture to depict our mood.  Notice the lovely attire coupled with swinging relaxed arms and posture that says, "wow am I happy to be travelling, but wow am I tired right now!"  Oh, and in Laos a tuktuk is called a jumbo, but as you can see...they aren't that big.

We all know that upon occaison, shopping can be fun.  Thomas usually disagrees profusely with that statement, but in Laos he started looking for a specific item.  It is known as a monk bag, and he had it in his mind that he needed a purple monk bag.  Well, we found one eventually...and after much perusing of shops and searching in markets we found a purple purse.  (We both fondly refer to it as Thomas' P.P.)  Maybe in another blog a photo of it will come up!

We came across one Wat that was particularly amazing.  It was very pretty and it offered Laos sauna and massage.  The Wats are not as flashy as the one's in Thailand, but we thought they looked more elegant and simply beautiful.  In this one, if you look very closely in the middle, you can see a group of apprentice monks sitting in a corridor talking perhaps, or maybe waiting for a lesson to begin.  We learned that almost all men in Laos and Thailand become monks at some point in their lives, to learn about Buddism and to help there parents have a good next life.  Some are monks for two weeks, others two years, and some for their whole lives.  The ordained monks are teachers for the apprentice monks and people in the community.  After a man's/boy's time in the monkhood they can then teach their peers the new things they have learned about Buddhism....there is always something new to be learned!
Another Wat in Laos.  Very beautiful, we think.  In some of our earlier blog posts there are pictures of some wats in Thailand.  Look at the subtle differences between them.  The wats in Laos looked a bit darker and richer....while the ones in Thailand were so sparkely and elaborate in decoration. 
Here is a picture of us kayaking along the Nam Khan river near Luang Prabang.  In some places the water was so smooth, it was like glass.  In other parts there were fun rapids where the water would splash up into the kayak getting you soaking wet.  The scenery and life that we saw along the river was beautiful...many fruit trees, children playing, women washing clothes, and in one place some young people out for picnics with their friends.  
This is a picture of Michelle on a rickety bamboo bridge that we had to cross to get to our guesthouse in Vang Vieng.  There is another bridge that you can cross, but it charges everybody (even the local people) about $3 to cross.....ridiculous!  The bamboo bridges got really intersting when two bicycles have to get past eachother.
A picture that just does not do justice to the beautiful garden at our Maylyn Guesthouse in Vang Vieng.  We were able to find a great guesthouse just outside of the town.  Vang Vieng has breathtaking surroundings.  With strange cliff/mountains, beautiful vegetaion, valleys and rivers.  But in recent years has become quite a destination for many European party people and many other tourists/backpackers.  It was strange to be around so many other tourists when we had not seen many at all before this, and also too bad that in the night there was loud music to take away from the sound of nature, so it was good that we found a guesthouse that was out of the way.  The owner was very knowledgeable and he pointed us in some good directions for hikes, cycling, and cave adventures.  We also met a whole bunch of really cool backpackers who we enjoyed hanging around with a lot.
You may be wondering what this picture is of.....it's difficult to get good pictures in caves!  This is one of the many limestone caves that we adventured in around Vang Vieng.  Some were so big and amazing, really.  Walking through could get a little scary, even with a flashlight, because they always seemed to just go on forever with only blackness infront of you.  In some places the caves were multi leveled or you would have to squeeze through a hole in the wall to get to the next part.  
We rented bicycles for a few days and that was really fun.  We biked to a lot of caves and into surrounding villages....it is amazing how friendly the local people are and how they always like to talk to you, practicing their english a little bit.  We usually ride our bikes, not just walk beside them, but this picutre was taken along a river and it was too rocky and bumpy to ride on, we tried!  Also in this picture you will notice the cows.  It is not unusual at all in Laos or Thailand to see cows walking across a street in town...their owners take them to different places to find good grass to eat.  Actually, just after this picture was taken a cow almost ran into Michelle, this was prevented from happening because another cow got in it's way and saved Michelle's life.

Anyway....we did a lot of cycling in Laos and it was so much fun.  Way better than going places in tuk tuks, because you feel more connected with your surroundings, and you don't pay as much.
Thomas walking along a beautiful path right below the tall and strange cliffs.  This picture was taken right after climbing one of the cliffs and adventuring in a cave high up on a mountain.  We had a beautiful view of the farmland and villages around the area, but the photo's didn't turn out...sorry.  The little boy walking in front of him was our guide.  We think that families can buy the caves or just assume the role of cave owners and won't let you into some of them without paying for a guide...it must be a pretty good business.  The little boy in the shot was our guide, and his English was quite exceptional.
Enjoying a lovely yellow curry at the Organic Mulbery farm outside of Vang Vieng.  The farm was a really great place.  It's a guesthouse, restaurant, organic farm, and education centre for local people.  They teach more sustainable farming methods to local farmers and help raise money for the local school.  At the farm you can take a tour and see all of the things that they do, but the day we went it wasn't available, we just had to read about it.  It seemed like a really great place, and a great asset to the local communtity.   
Refreshing Mulbery tea  at the Organic Mulbery Farm.  The Mulbery Pancake was also very dericion.  We biked almost 10 kilometers from our guesthouse to get here, and the iced tea and shade was so perfect after biking in the oh-so-hot sun.
Tubing along the river is something that is sort of a must when you are in Vang Vieng.  The first part of the river ride is lined with river bars with loud music.  We stopped at one or two, because it is part of the fun (they have huge swings over the water and water slides...thomas did those, not michelle) and talked with some friends we had made.  Some people just stayed at the bars all day and didn't finish going down the river, which we see as quite a loss for them.  It was so beautiful.  To float down took about three and a half hours with steady arm paddling and was so worth it.  After going past the twenty or so bars we left the loud music and European G-strings behind and were able to enjoy the river on our own.  The sun was setting behind the mountains and the world felt so big around us.  It was really amazing.  We found the development around the first part of the river quite sad, because it was so beautiful and didn't need that, but were torn by the fact that the development can actually be quite fun.
The sun behind the cliffs that surround Vang Vieng.  You can't use words to describe it.  We feel so blessed to be able to see and experience the beauty around us.  The landscape was so strong, it left us both lost for words.

And now to finsish off with the smiling face of Michelle!

As you know, we are now in the lovely beach town of Hua Hin.  Most days we enjoy very tasty street food, but on this day (yesterday maybe) we decided to go on a walk down memory lane for Thomas and eat at the same Pizza Hut (We know....youo shouldn't eat Pizza Hut when your in Thailand, but it was so GOOD!) as Thomas and his family did when they were in Thailand when Thomas was younger.  He says that the place looked exactly the same...and Michelle decided that it was the funkiest Pizza Hut she has ever been to.

We plan on posting more sand and sun photo's in the near future...we will try not to let the blogging get as far behind as recently.  But We're sure there's no more hard feelings like that....how could you not forgive a smiling face like the one pictured above?!?!?

With much love and devotion we leave you for now, and we hope to hear from you through the comments board soon!

สวัสดี ขาด โธมัส สาว

สวัสดี ขาด  โธมัส  สาว 

We hope that you are all well!  In case you are not completely fluent in reading Thai characters, the above says, "Hello from Thomas and Michelle."  Actually, a more accurate description would be, "Hello from Thomas and the lovely white woman."  Sadly, there is no Thai translation for Michelle, and that is why they have so much trouble pronouncing her name.  So there you go, a helpful lesson about Thai for everyone! 

 

Anyways, we sincerely apologize for the diminished quality of blobbing in the past few weeks.  Life in Thailand moves at a different pace, and therefore so do our blobs, if they were to move, which they do not.  Well, this is our attempt at giving our blob a fresh taste and smell.  We hope that you all enjoy it! 

Oh, and if anyone reading this is not a blob member, fear not!  Now you can post comments too!  The house of Driedger-Enns thoughtfully created a blobber for everyone to use.  It is blogthe9@gmail.com, and the password is blogger99.  Please feel free to use this, and we always love to hear from you guys!

On to blobbing!

We are almost done teaching at Ban Non Pho, we have only three days left and we are very sad to be leaving the students.  It has not always been easy, but we feel so close to each of the children, and saying goodbye will be very hard.

As the days have passed, we have been able to teach more and more to the students.  It has become so rewarding, and our teaching has become a lot more enthusiastic with the passing of time.

We have developed a certain style of teaching together that seems to work very well with the students.  Michelle is very talented at writing on the blackboard, and Thomas is good at sounding out words slowly in English, over and over, and over, and ooovvvvverrrrrr.  No, Ohh, not ooo, VERRR, not VEL, okay, good!  As you can see in the picture above, the students love Michelle, and they love Thomas too!  We make a good teaching team. 

See!  They do love Thomas!  Hooray!  Actually, this is the satanic (well they're not that bad, at least they are cute) grade one and two class.  We have worked hard, and they are doing much better.  Thomas looks like quite the teacher, he even has the stance and pursed hands of a teacher. 

One day last week there was a school lunch put on by someone in the community.  It was not the typical hot dog lunch however, it was a delicious green curry and rice meal.  We really enjoyed eating with the students, and all through the school you could hear the sound of children slurping up spicy food.  One thing of particular note would be that the main item in the green curry was chicken feet.  The students loved eating them, and all afternoon you could hear the cracking of chicken bones as the kids munched happily away.  We did not enjoy them quite as much, but they were still interesting to try.

Well, Besides the fact that Thomas barely fits into the photo...The teacher in the middle is Peekay.  She is a lovely women who has been very kind to us, and we often go for lunch together.  The language barrier has not been difficult with her, we just do a lot of smiling at each other, and laugh when someone does something funny. 

This is a student in patome four.  Whenever we get out the camera at school, the students go crazy, posing for the camera until we take their picture.  This class likes to draw and do anything involving art, so we do a whole bunch of crafts with them.  We have even made cut out snowflakes with them.  They are a lot of fun, and the boys really love and respect us, we make them laugh a lot, and they make us laugh a lot.

This is a photo that deserves an explanation.  We spent the weekend with our Thai mom, and on Saturday night we enjoyed a Korean BBQ night at our house.  This involves a grill heated by charcoal, seen directly above.  You put your meat and vegetables that yo

u want cooked on the grill, and a tasty soup goes around the outside of the grill, also heated by the charcoal.  This was one of the tastiest meals we have eaten, and we enjoyed it more because a friend that we have made was able to join us.  Her name is Nicole (one of the other volunthai volunteers), and she is sitting right beside Michelle, if you have not been able to guess.  The Korean BBQ night actually took place on Valentine's night.  For weeks our Thai mom had been planning this and reffering to it as "Volunthai day".  She would say, "we will invite Nikki and Tuk tik and Kaam over." or, "You can teach about volunthai day."  We were really confused for so long, and then figured out that in thai "volunthai" = "valentine's"! We felt a little silly.

Another photo of the students, and you can see two different varieties of the uniforms that they wear, we believe they have at least five different sets, one for each day of the school week.  These students are from patome (grade) 4, 5, and 6.  They are really wonderful students to teach....very helpful.  They catch on fast and then help us explain a concept to the other students.   

Now for a little story...Do not worry, the picture above will explain itself!

We were just finished teaching for the morning, it had gone very well.  We had taught for three hourse already and felt very good about it.  Then, at lunch we were told that we would have lunch with the principle of a high school in a neighboring village.  We agreed of course.  The lunch was very good and the new principal paid, and after lunch we were told that we would teach at the new principals high school.  We were taken aback, but what could we do other then to agree?  We asked how many students we would teach, and he said, "not more than sixty."  This was something we were not used to, but we had to just go with it.  After three hours of teaching with absolutely no resources...it was over, and we decided that we like Ban Non Pho School much better.  The photo above is one of the three grades we taught during that time.   Oh, what a suprise that was! 

A picture taken on a weekend outing with our Thai mom, of two elderly women working in a large body of water that at one time used to be a field.  They are collecting little shrimp from the bottom.  Something that we have noticed a lot in Thailand so far is that there are many very old women who still work sooooo hard.  It is a very interesting thing to see.  They work so hard, and look so weather beaten....and yet you can always be sure of a smile from them.

The food in the centre of the photo is a dish that we have enjoyed in different forms.  It is live shrimp swimming in chili, lime sauce, and cilantro.  It is actually very delicious, and we both enjoyed it more than we thought that we would.  Well delicious in a strange sort of way...when you bite down on the shrimps they sort of crunch (you can feel the legs) and then burst.  We have also eaten this same dish minus the shrimp and adding ant eggs.    

Last weekend we decided to take a six hour bus trip to Khao Yai National Park.  Let's just say that the un-airconditioned and stiff seated bus ride was well worth it.  Khao Yai is a beautiful place!  We stayed at an inexpensive, but nice guesthouse outside of the park the close by town of Pak Chong.  We booked a "Jungle Safari" through the guesthouse and it was so wonderful.  On each day our guides were very friendly and knowledgable.  Our restful weekend became two days of action packed adventure.....we trekked through the forest, watched birds, climbed up cliff things, spotted snakes, and monkeys, explored bat caves (we covered our mouths to breath, don't worry), vistited wilderness Buddah temples, and much more!  This picture appears to be of a pond and rocks, but to the left of the photo is a gigantic waterfall...we just forget to include it in the picture.   

In Khao Yai there are many mountains and forests.  After driving up to almost the top of the tallest mountain we did a small hike and came to this beautiful cliff.  Our guide on this day was not only an ornathologist, fluent in English, and a outdoors women, but also a photographer!  She loved to take picture with our cameras, so were able to get lots of good pictures (not just of us but of animals and stuff too, we're not that vain).  In this picture you can see Michelle, Thomas, and our friend Nicole.  It was a really breathtaking site, and was a little scary to look down off the side of the cliff....we were really high up!  

This picture was taken on the evening of our first day of touring in Khao Yai and area.  You may wonder what the squigly black line accross the sky is....it is millions of bats exiting their cave to go out and hunt in the night time.  It was really an amazing thing.  Everyday the bats leave their cave like this at around 5-6 pm.  There are more than 2 million bats and it takes about two hourse for all of them to leave the cave in a long string like this.  It was quite an amazing thing to see.  

Thomas climbing a tall tree in Khao Yai.  And no, it is not many trees, it is just one.  The tree starts growing as just one trunk and then it's roots grow down, making it look like many trees....then when the inside roots die the tree is supported by it many other trunks and new ones continue to grow.   Oh, and you might wonder what his big funny socks are, and why he is wearing such strange things....well they are big funny socks and the reason you wear them is so you can tuck your pants into them and then it protects your legs and such from the attack of ticks and leeches.  We only found one after the day in the jungle, so we guess they work.  

Taken on our walk through the bat cave.  The intersting thing about this bat cave is that it is actually a holy Buddah cave where monks come to meditate.  And yes, it is a little bit of a creepy photo...Thomas does not usually smile like that!  
This is a picture of the fresh mineral springs we swam in.  The water was so beautifully blue and suprisingly warm.  The water comes up from the ground in this pool and then spills into other pools that are not in this picture.  All together it was a very beautiful sight, and a very welcome swim in the hot weather.  There were many Thai men swimming as well, and Michelle recieved many oggles and oogles...But everyone was friendly, and we had a good time.
A bad picture, we know, but it is in the small market in the small town of Pak Chong.  We were in this town, just exploring a bit and then it started to rain!!!  This was very strange and highly unusual because it is the dry season right now.  It was raining so hard that we had to find somewhere to go.  We ended up hanging out in the very small market for an hour or so.  It was pretty cool.  Michelle was wearing a white T-shirt, and after we sat down we sat down we noticed that her T-shirt was now brown.  The rain was the first in a long time, so it was filled with dust and pollution, which was attracted to our clothes.
Michelle with Naan (one of our students), and Nong oam and Nong am (the daughters of our Thai mom's wonderful sister).  This was also one our valentine's weekend tour and korean BBQ with our Thai mom.  Nong Oam and Am are the sweetest little girls.  They love us so much and they are always ready to play.  We don't think they know that we can't speak Thai, because they are always telling us stories and we listen.  They are very sweet and we will miss them when we leave from our homestay. 
Again, on the Valentine's tour.  The Water buffallo are swimming back home after a day grazing in a field acrross the big body of water.  Also we think that this is a very beautiful tree.  We think it looks like the tree of life. 
Thomas, the farmer, smelling the very sweetly fragrant grass of Isaan and looking out over the rice fields, water buffalo, and women harvesting shrimp.  He analysised that it was good grass, and must be good food for the water buffalo.

Driving by a bright green rice field.  Because it is the dry seasone right now there aren't that many, but there will be more in the rainy season.  Right now we mostly see sugar cane for crops, and grasslands used for cattle.
Three more days and our teaching time in Isaan will come to a close--just like our blob entry is coming to a close now (hehehe).  It has been such an amazing experience to live with a family and do things that local people do, not just the touristy things.  We have eaten interesting food, and felt quite awkward at times.....and we are so thankful for all of those experiences.  Teaching and playing with the students has been so much fun and so rewarding.  We will miss them and think of them often--what will they do in their futures?  So like the end of anything good, the end of teaching in Isaan is bitter sweet.  We have been welcomed into a community and made wonderful connections with people....we will be sad to say goodbye.  At the same time, we are really looking forward to the next part of our trip.  There is so much to see and do, and we can't wait for more experiences!  

So with much love to all our blobbers and hoping that you are not too cold......we end this post.  Parting is such sweet sorrow!  

MICHELLE ALEXANDRA CLELAND AND THOMAS STUART DRIEDGER ENNS

SAWATDEE!

Hello Blobs!
After another great week of teaching it is the weekend....and a long weekend at that! so we decided to go on a bit of an adventure for our four day weekend. Right now we write to you from our beautiful bamboo guesthouse on the bank of the Mekong river in the small and sleepy town of Nong Kai. From our bamboo jungle village we can see Lao accross the river, and people in boats fishing. It's a very peaceful place to be.
Now...onto the bloppling!!!!

Sitting under one of the many bamboo shelters at our Mut Mee guest house this is our view of Laos and the Mekong river. This picture does not really do justice to the beautiful view, or plant life, or lovely huts and hamocks.....but it sort of gives you an idea.
As well as visiting the sculpture park, market, village weavers workshop, and other local places we have really enjoyed sitting in the garden of our very peacful and friendly guesthouse. there are quite an assortment of travellers here and everyone is exteremly friendly, it feels like a community of sorts. Here you can see Thomas sitting under a bamboo shelter, probably working on this very blob posting.
Along the Thai side of the Mekong there is a beautiful board walk. In the day time when you walk down it there are many people (but not too crowded or busy at all) and by about 8 o'clock there is almost no one....it is a very quite and relaxed town. This is us walking along the quite boarwalk one evening in search of mango and sticky rice at about 8 pm, and everything was closing....no sticky rice for us:(
Again, another boardwalk picture. is that the moon in the background?
So this is us in the city of Khon Kaen. We are enjoying an awesome meal, on one of our free weekends. Khon Kaen has been really great for us, because it offers us some relaxation in a place where we can just do nothing for a little while. The hotel where we stayed was super nice, and we watched movies, ate good food and used the internet.
The same meal mentioned above, only Michelle is seen enjoying Pat Thai and Som Tum. OUR FAVORITES! Here is a recipe for some som tum, for those who are interested.

4 oz Green papaya
1 garlic clove
3 small red or green chilis
lots of peanuts
1 oz long green beans, chopped
2 tb lime juice
3 tb fish sauce, or light soy sauce
1 ts sugar
1 tomato diced
Cabbage leaves

Instructions for Som Tam
Peel the outer skin from the green papaya and finely shred the flesh on a cheese grater or chop very finely into long thin shreds. Set aside. In a mortar, lightly pounnd the garlic, add the chilis and lightly pound while occasionally stirring with a spoon to prevent the resulting paste from thickening. Add the long beans and slightly bruise them. Add the shredded papaya, lightly pound and stir until all the ingredients are blended together. Add the lime juice, soy sauce and sugar and stir into the mixture. Finally add the tomato, stirring once. Arrange the Chinese cabbage leaves on a serving dish and turn the yam on to them. We hope that you make it!

This is Michelle munching out on carbs that we do not usually get...and it was the best pastry that we have ever eaten. The hotel we stayed at was very nice, and had a bakery inside it, we ate a few cherry filled doughnuts and croissants, ok, maybe a dozen. HAHAHA

Vietnamese food. Very tasty, and very light. This meal consisted of rice paper (to wrap), lettuce, afew herbs, cucumber, garlic, chilis, starfruit, green banana, rice noodles, pork and peanut sauce. This food is awesome...but needless to say, you have to eat alot in order to feel full! This meal was eaten with our Thai mom and her sister and towards the end of the meal, They both started laughing. When they laugh, all you can do is laugh along, that is what we did. Then she translated their comments, by saying "ohhh michelle, you have gotten so fat!" Michelle is definetely starting to feel the push of being thin in Asian culture. Although her appearance has not changed at all, all of a sudden fat comments started and haven't stopped...but just from our thai mom.

An after school excursion with our students where we saw some of the countryside around Ban Non Pho. In this picture, Thomas is reaching for a tasty berry, that tastes almost exactly like tapioca pudding. Thomas was the only one tall enough to reach the tasty treat, so his services were indespensible for a while.
This is our Thai mom and our principle with us at a huge gathering of Thai scouts. The evening was Hawiian themed, and we both felt very overwhelmed by the sheer size of the gathering. There was hundreds of tents, and probably five hundred scouts in total. We were guests of honour for some reason, and got wreaths of flowers to go along with our status.

This is a lovely shot of Michelle with our students. This is primarily grade five and six students, and they all love to get photos with the two of us. After class is over, we not only teach them English, but they teach us lots of Thai!

We took a field trip to Khon Kaen with our school...Sixty students crammed into the backs of three pickup trucks, roaring down the highway...no big deal, they had permission slips! And We attended a festival held in the name of sustainability. The trip was mainly a shopping trip for our Thai mom, so we looked at orchids, orchids and more orchids. After that, we took care of a couple of students while our mom went shopping at a Thaimart. We had no idea what to do with them, and were tired from the orchid shopping, so we took them for pizza! We thought it would be an awesome idea, but they took one bite of the pizza and spat it onto the plate! One girl tried very hard to finish a slice of the stuff, but right after consuming it she ran out of the restaraunt to go to the bathroom. She must have really had to pee! Ironic that all of the children always say that their favorite food is pizza...We think that they are lying. we don't think they have ever put so much dough or cheese in their systems in their whole lives.This picture had to go into the blog, because those of you from RJC, and maybe still going there will recognize this sweet little boy. Thomas has dubbed him Chandler, in response to his mannerisms, moods and charming good looks. We love him to bits, and he makes us miss home!

The delicacy being consumed through a straw here is freshly pressed sugar cane juice. It is lightly sweet and very refreshing!
This monk grabbed Thomas' hand and gestured at Michelle to take a photo. That is what she did. It surprised us because we view them as such holy and highly regarded people. It made our day! Well, it made Thomas' day, and made Michelle a bit jealous. She is not even allowed to touch them! In any city you will see monks walking about, and they are sometimes surprisingly liberal. We have seen them doing everything from driving a scooter, to buying building supplies in a hardware store, to talking on cell phones to smoking cigarrettes. It seemed strange to us to see such holy figures doing things like this!

This is a picture that Thomas took on one of his WILD ANIMAL SAFARIS! There is a video of this, but we were unable to upload it. It is a praying mantis! And it was occupying the wall of our bathroom. It was as big as Thomas' hand, and has the most flourescent green. We were pretty sure that it could bite us if it wanted to.

This picture was also taken on our after school adventure in the country side around our village. We all went for a swim in the river, and had a jolly good time!Michelle is somewhere in this bean field...CAN YOU FIND HER?
Michelle enjoying some sugar cane. It is a bit more difficult to consume than sugar can juice, but is just as delicious.
We are playing with our students in a stream. The cold water was nice to splash...at us! Need we say more?

Our past week teaching was wonderful, we are really enjoying our students, and the Isaan culture is wonderful to learn about. We hope to teach about Canada next week, so we will be explaining what snow is! We barely remember what it is ourselves!

Well, this is the end of our post. We did not put many photos involving us in Nong Khai, we will do that next time! Much love and we hope to hear from you all via the comments!
T. and M.